Passenger Car Siding (0,75 x 0,89)

The finest rhythm of the whole group

Just under a millimeter between grooves is the boundary beyond which the eye no longer tells individual boards apart and sees only a finely striped surface. That is exactly the impression made by the siding of passenger railroad cars, by wooden ceiling boarding or by a batten fence seen from a distance. This grid is therefore used where the texture is meant to show only as a hint.

Where it fits and where it no longer does

Converted, the spacing comes out at roughly eight centimeters in 1:87, six and a half in 1:72, something over four in 1:48 and three in 1:35. In the large reductions it is therefore not boards but narrow strips, ribbed sheet metal or a trim frieze, and that tends to be its best role: the cladding of a cab, a door panel or the ceiling of a car, where a coarser grid would look clumsy.

A patch nobody will find

Seven tenths of a millimeter is a thickness that can still be glued onto a surface and at the same time will not press in under the fingers. When a kit is damaged during disassembly or when a piece of its siding is missing, a replacement is cut to the shape of the opening, recessed into a sanded hollow, and the plane stays intact.

Recommended procedure

A fine grid is sensitive to sanding, so the edges are leveled with a sharp knife rather than with abrasive paper. It is advisable to lay the paint on thinly so that the grooves do not vanish under a heavy coat; spraying with thinned paint or a dry brush works well. A sheet measuring 15 by 30 centimeters is enough for many small panels and the rest can be stored flat so that it does not twist. Before gluing it is worth testing on an offcut how deep the solvent goes into the fine texture.